SoCreate loves writers! And during the month of love, we wanted to show affection to our SoCreate community members around the globe who put in hard work on their screenplays for our “Get Writing” Screenwriting Competition. We asked the first handful of submitters to share some screenwriting love with the rest of our writing community, by telling us what it is that they LOVE about screenwriting. We hope their remarks spark inspiration in you and remind you why you tackle the art and craft of script writing every day!
"I love writing because writing is the stepping stone to all things that make cinema. Writing is the beginning of something extraordinary, to bring about worlds, characters, and stories to life by the click of several buttons. It all begins the second you type "Fade In" and from there, you're now telling a story only you the writer could tell. This is why I love screenwriting, because I love telling you stories. I am an author in the film industry."
“I think the one thing I love about screenwriting is being able to tell my own stories and create my own characters. I know that sounds like a generic answer, but it’s true! If I can get someone to laugh or cry while reading my story, then I know I succeeded. There’s no better feeling to see someone appreciate something I wrote.”
“What I LOVE about screenwriting is its capacity to create anyone, anyplace, anytime, anywhere. Not to sound like Janet Jackson, but the ability to take words and create a picture with limitless imagination is just awesome to me. The ability to give a voice to someone who may not have otherwise been given one and to tell a story that may have never been told is what screenwriting is all about. Shout out to all the scribes who have ever put pen to pad, fingers to a keyboard and brought light to a story through screenwriting.”
“For most of my creative life, I've been involved in some portion of the role-playing game and video games industry, whether it be writing supplements for tabletop role-playing games or writing about video games. Writing screenplays feels like a natural evolution of that part of my life. Thinking about what other people see and what other people experience when I want to convey a story are really the heart of what designing and playing games with other people is about. When I write a script, I try to reach into that pile of experience that I have with really dynamic improv in the things that have happened that designers never intended but which stuck powerfully in my mind and pull out some of that lightning to share that moment of discovery.”
“What I love about screenwriting: The chance to tell a story. The chance to have some understanding of the world we live in. The chance to laugh, cry, grieve, find amusement, and take the next step forward.”
“What I love about screenwriting is having to build from scratch. Being challenged to be inventive but strategically so. But the best feeling in the world, is creating a story that someone loves. It’s why I write.”
“I love words and I love being CREATIVE. I love having the ability to create. Screenwriting allows me to do both, use my love for words and being creative to create worlds, situations, stories, whatever I can dream or think up. Even if I don’t sell everything I write screenwriting allows me the ability to capture my thoughts, concepts and story ideas in concrete way. No one can stop you from writing regardless of where you are in your screenwriting journey. So, keep writing!!!!”
“Screenwriting is my therapy, my meditation, my way to make sense of the world. It also helps hone and direct my creative drive. I love reading characters I’ve written come alive and dance on the page. Very little compares to the sense of achievement the final draft of a screenplay gives a writer.”
“What I LOVE about screenwriting is being able to choose my own adventure with every click of the keyboard and not just the choose A or B options or sometimes just A to experience a story.”
“I love telling stories, specifically stories about some of the amazing women I've found in my travels who laid the groundwork for the opportunities other women have today. I think that's because I love finding out about other people; what they hoped for, what they worked toward, what disappointed them, how they triumphed, what made them laugh. Somewhere in every story I find common ground, inspiration, or hope and that's why I love writing screenplays, because I can celebrate the lives and accomplishments of women who deserve to have their stories told and hope that someday they wind up on the silver screen!”
“The economy of words.”
“The second-best drug on the planet is the endorphins released from imagination. Simply put, I love the suspension of disbelief. Time-travelling, exploring future-fantasy. Being able to open my mind to other cultures and perceptions through diverse characters. I'm a human-observationist. A scribe of future humanity.”
“What I love about screenwriting is that you're not just telling a tale - you're building the foundation of a world that viewers escape into, where they meet your characters and accompany them on the story. It's like the difference between telling someone about your vacation or grabbing them by the hand and taking them along with you!”
“I love being able to create visual worlds of limitless potential. It’s not like novel writing where there are long, drawn out descriptions and metaphors about little details, but rather it is storytelling in the most direct and human way. Plus, dialogue is insanely fun to write! I also love that everyone has a story to tell and through this shared medium anyone can pick up the craft to share unique stories.”
“What I love about writing is getting to know my characters so well that they take control of their story and I become no more than a spectator and transcriptionist.”
“My favorite thing about my work is finding the funny within the funny. Moments of truth coming out through the comedy of absurd situations or comedic characters. I love creating a puzzle in a storyline and then solving that puzzle as I get to the end. I love that moment when the audience “gets it”. It won’t be explicit, so they sometimes have to break it down. It might be challenging to do this or it might be easy, but when this happens, it is rewarding. I put so much thought in my work it might seem esoteric, but when audiences react by laughing or crying, then they connect, they “get it”. I know a film has turned out well when this happens. They understand what I was doing as the writer, and it has made a profound impact on their life. When people see my work, I’d like them to escape from their crazy world into mine.”
“Oh man. What do I love about screenwriting?
As far back as I can remember, I have disappeared into what I call “Cinemagination”. I was watching movies before I knew how to read, carried away by the larger than life images and adventures that played out before me at a local drive-in theater. My mom would bring popcorn; yes, the one that blew up into a big round silver ball after you’d shake it around over the flame of the stove top. She’d pack up me and my older brother, Joey, dressed in our pajamas, with pillows and blankets stuffed in the back seat, and whisk us away to magic land under the stars.
My brother and I would excitedly put the blankets on the hood, lay back against our pillows like we were in our own living room, and listen to the single speaker she slipped on to her window. We’d munch the popcorn and lose ourselves to the glorious offering on that wide wide screen that towered before us. For two boys, growing up with a single mother in the 1960’s, you couldn’t have told us we weren’t rich. We were the richest kids on earth, going places wherever that screen could take us.
Now I have the ability to reach into my imagination, my “thinkubater”, and tell stories via the art of screenwriting that could one day transport others to that same magic land I fell in love with as a kid. To be the first link in the long chain of getting a movie on that BIG SILVER SCREEN.
To some, screenwriting may be a lonely endeavor. For me, it is getting to know new people, discovering their stories, spending time with them, watching them rise and fall and rise again. It is not a lonely endeavor, rather it is a whole world of adventures that play out on my brainscreen that compels me to sit in front of a laptop, open up a screenwriting program, and get down everything I see all the way to its satisfying end. Then spend the rest of the time with those folks rewriting and telling their story even better. And because I don’t get paid to do it yet, it’s months and months of creative juices spilling out for the love of it, in hopes that one day that story will be larger than life splayed out for the world to enjoy.
The rule is, you only write what is seen on the screen. That’s it. And only a screenplay can get a story to the BIG SCREEN. It is unique to the technology that created moving images. Before moving pictures, there was no such thing as a screenplay. But without a screenplay you would simply have moving images. I’ve written a novel, based on one of my screenplays. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was quite an undertaking. But the two are completely different animals. With novels your audience is a single reader. With screenplays your audience is everyone in preproduction, production, and post production, as well as the paying movie goer. That’s an incredible amount of information processed into as succinct a way as not to interfere with the story itself, while giving literally hundreds if not thousands of people all the information they need to bring your story to life. It really is a coded document with multiple layers of specific information imbedded in the body that must be included while the screenwriter is telling his story around a campfire. Or to put it simply, it’s like painting by numbers, only you come up with the image, and get to choose the colors, but you must stay within the parameters of the document, while painting the story as only you can do, in your own unique voice.
So I can tell you what I love about screenwriting, and break down all the little nuances, but I can’t express how much I love telling a story via screenwriting.
That’s probably better answered by a wide-eyed kid, lying on a car hood, under the stars, lost in his next greatest adventure. Mmmm. Now my mouth is watering for some of that Jiffy Pop Popcorn.”
From memories with mom to giving a voice to those who may not have one, there are thousands of reasons why screenwriters take their talent to heart. Whatever the motivation, we love it, we support you, and we wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day!
With love,